He had not thought that the anger would rise in him this quickly. He had thought himself a more rational, reasonable man. Someone who could work his way through most any situation but the emotions boiled in his belly and he hoped that he would not see her. He did not feel up to the level of self-control it would require if she was there, standing at the railing as she so often did. He turned the corner on to the street and looked down the block. She wasn’t there. He quickly mounted the steps and laid the black tulip on to the mat, turned on his heel and left.

My wife and I were on a garden show and I had been taking pictures of the flowers that I came across. Some of them were really remarkable and almost gaudy in their appearance and then I was struck by what appeared to be an almost black tulip standing off by itself. Contrast is an element of photography that sometimes gets overlooked but can produce some very interesting images. I wanted to increase the level of contrast by turning the foliage in the background into an amorphous green blur so I switched to my fast 50mm and opened up to f/2.2 This allowed even the stalk of the tulip to go out of focus and set the bud floating on a field of green. I was pleased to see that the tulip’s leaf remained in focus to increase the visual interest of the bottom of the frame.

-Russell Berg